rootwork today: hoodoo at the crossroads

This thing that people call hoodoo has a certain energy that powers it that has to be respected for it to work. If you try to turn it into something that it isn’t it just wont work right if it works at all.
Even if you wanted to consider rootwork folk magic (which I don’t) you’d have to admit folk magic implies a connection to a larger “folk” culture of which it’s part of and which defines it and its’ parameters. Otherwise we’d just be talking about one worldwide folk culture. The fact that rootwork/ hoodoo exists and has a definition is proof enough of what I’m talkin ‘bout. Defining African-American practices in terms of European culture and cultural values is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the Old Skool rootworkers/hoodooists did. What they did was this: Develop and define a culture in terms of the values and technologies they and their parents carried inside of them when they got here in concert and in combination with others who shared their same cultural condition.
Whatever ingredients they used and developed were defined and incorporated for use in terms of their own culture and technology.
When they used Native American or European cultural practices they incorporated them in terms of and using African cultural practices and technology. This process of incorporating European and Native American practices and harmonizing them in terms of and to African practices is what created African-American culture.
Let me put it this way. When you hear classical music sampled on lets say, a Dr. Dre track is he using it in terms of European cultural values or the rules laid down by European musical theorists? No, he’s jackin’. He’s using it in terms of his own musical culture, the hip-hop culture and its’ own musical rules. If you took all the ingredients Dre uses to make a track and gave them to a classical composer and told to make a composition using only those ingredients you wouldn’t get a hip-hop track back. You’d get some classical music, made with classical musical rules and techniques. And conversely if took a classical orchestra to a Dr. Dre session and told Dre to make a track using only them he’d comeback with a hip-hop track and probably a hot one.
Anyone using 1920’s African-American energy manipulation techniques outside of their cultural and philosophical paradigm is spell jackin’. Placing those practices inside an alien paradigm causes the power they had to be emptied an replaced by the power of the new paradigm. They lose the power they had and become a subset of other,
seemingly weaker practices. As a concrete example, I’ve seen online where people say that hoodoo is an ephemeral practice where the spells die quickly and have to be done again and again. I can guarantee you that “real” rootworkers alive today would disagree with that assessment and even a careful reading of Hyatt’s informers would contradict it as well.
Conversely spell jackin’ into the African based A-A cultural and philosophical paradigms the Essence of what rootwork/hoodoo is. This is due to the same process of reculturalization ( I think I just made a preacher word). Whatever it was becomes emptied and replaced through African- based energy manipulation techniques passed down to us today, in the same way Dr. Dre or Kanye West empty and replace musical “spells” to make their music.
Same crossroad, different destination.

Uhh, I feel another preacher word uh-huh Comin’ on - uhh

Destin-A-tion! - uh - huh
the Power! - uhh
of finding your way - huh
yaa-suh (congregation interjects)
Which way will you Go !? - huh
When you get - uh-huh
To the Crossroads? - uh

peace

Categories: rootwork, hoodoo, culture, african-american, philosophy